Lee Brown

A: The officially sanctioned way to empty the Temporary Internet Files folder in Internet Explorer is to select ToolsòInternet Options and click the Delete Files button on the General tab. This should remove most of the unwanted files, but there's a big one left. It's called index.dat, and it doesn't go away or even shrink as the cache changes -it just gets bigger. What's more, you cannot delete this file from inside Windows.

To get rid of index.dat bloat, select StartòShut Down. Click Restart in MS-DOS mode, then OK. At the DOS prompt, type del c:\windows\tempor~1\index.dat if you've got Internet Explorer 4.x, or del c:\windows\tempor~1\content.ie5\index.dat if you're using IE 5. Press <Enter>, then reboot. You'll still have an index.dat file (if Windows doesn't find one, it creates one), but the file will now be much smaller.

On some systems, clicking the Delete Files button doesn't shrink C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files at all. That's because something-probably setting up a network or installing a wayward application-has caused Internet Explorer to change where it stores temporary files. To find out where the real cache is, go to Internet Explorer and select ToolsòInternet Options. On the General tab, click Settings. In the Settings dialog box, click View Files to bring up your real cache folder.

While you've got the Settings dialog box up, you can move the cache back to the original location-a safe plan if you're the only one using your computer. Click Move Folder, then select C:\Windows from the resulting folder tree (Windows puts the cache in a folder called Temporary Internet Files within the one you pick). Click OK twice, then Yes when asked to reboot. After rebooting, you can safely delete the older folders.

-Lincoln Spector